Negative Eleven
by lockhartgardner
Summary: SPOILERS FOR 5x11. Tomorrow's high temperature in Chicago is -11F, so Alicia's looking for her winter weather gear and sorting through her closet. While doing so, she finds a certain beige suit that may just come in handy for court.


**Author's Note: I got the idea for this little fic from two (three including the sneak peek for 5x11) sources: A conversation I had with Kiki where she said she'd like to see a scene where Alicia decides to wear to court the suit she wore when she began her affair with Will (see the sneak peek), and the weather forecast for record cold temperatures in the Midwest, including Chicago.**

**Since I'm using real-time events while the show is supposed to resume at the Florrick/Agos holiday party (in December), there are going to be some weird things going on with the timeline. Try to ignore those things, if you can.**

**I hope it's clear that what I've tried to do here is not offer my opinions on if Alicia's right or wrong, but rather to show what I think is going through Alicia's mind. I'm quite inexperienced at writing fiction of any sort, but my aim is always to try my hardest to make the characters as contradictory and complex as they are on the actual show.**

**I tend to dislike forming opinions about a plotline before it happens, so I'm fully expecting that this won't end up holding up with what actually happens in 5x11. I'm curious to see how this all plays out!**

* * *

Her closet is stuffed. Such a small space cannot accommodate such a big and complex life. She has three separate wardrobes—casual; work; First Lady of Illinois-, plus her winter gear. That's what she's searching for now. Tomorrow, she's heard, is going to be the coldest day Chicago's seen in 20 years, and she needs to be prepared. Alicia Florrick always needs to be prepared, and today, prepared means finding the bulky winter gear she's sentenced to the back of her overflowing closet (its crime: being neither lawyerly nor fit for a politician's wife).

But the task is more daunting than she expected, and now she wants to sort her entire closet. It's gotten out of hand: organization at work and in the rest of her apartment has led to chaos in her bedroom. She's going to move all of her casual clothes to her dresser, and sort the rest by color.

A towering pile of suits, dresses, blouses sits on her bed. Red, red, red, red, red, red, red. Blood red-no. No. Rose red. Powerful red, assertive red, confident red. Gorgeous red. Red-is-my-color-and-I-know-it red. She'd gravitated away from her signature color in recent months, in ways both conscious and unconscious. Her rational side told her that red was not always the best color to use to make an impression (she's been thinking about choosing colors strategically ever since her meeting with an image consultant, one of her FLOIL duties). And she didn't feel like wearing it much these days. How strange.

She's starting there—with the reds.

A pattern soon emerges as she picks up one item of clothing, transfers it to her closet, and gently sorts through the stack of clothes for the next item of the correct color. It's a big mindless and calming, she finds, as her mind wanders. First, she's reflecting on the clothes. This shade of red looks particularly nice on her. That cut isn't the most flattering. This is the jacket she wore when Peter announced his second run for State's Attorney (alternatively: this is the jacket she wore when Will left her that voicemail she never heard) (alternatively: this is the jacket she wore two months later when it was her contributions and performance in court that won her firm a case). Before she knows it, she's not thinking about the clothes. The red jacket morphs into the moment she first wore it. The moment morphs into the emotions.

Alicia hangs the jacket up with more force than she intended to, reproaches herself for her own agitation. However nice that missing message might have been, however much he might have loved her (she's still curious about that message), she wants so desperately to be done with this. She's already determined what she wants; it's not him. She's been over her decision a million times. She's followed through; he's followed her.

Literally, that is. Her nostalgia and curiosity about what could have been give way to annoyance. She has done _everything_, hasn't she? She's left his firm (not gracefully, admittedly). She's found a way to align what she wants in her personal life with what she wants in her professional life. She's bitter about the way Lockhart/Gardner treated her and sometimes acts with that anger, but she's justified. So justified. There is no way she is not justified. (She thinks). And even if she's not justified-but she is justified-, she's turned her focus outward. Lockhart/Gardner is not the enemy. Lockhart/Gardner is just a firm she's very glad no longer employs her. And how has Will responded? By following her. From case to case, lawsuit to lawsuit, any tangential connection he can create to her business, he does.

It's emotional and ugly and angry and personal and irrational and cruel, this form of harassment. Harassment? She doesn't pause at that accusation. She doesn't internally debate whether another word would better suit the situation. Swiftly, Alicia moves on to the few green items in her wardrobe (Zach's arrest a year ago- she should check on Zach when she's done with this, he's submitting the last of his college applications tonight), and allows herself to feel her own anger. Why is Will acting this way? He's not over her, that much is obvious. How deep is his love? She stops herself there. She doesn't want to know. It's irrelevant, anyway, his pain is no excuse for his lashing out at her.

She's hurt. She's resolved to never show him, but she's hurt. They have been (they were?) friends for decades, and they were close, even if she wasn't in love with him. When she hurt him, he was the collateral damage in a move she made for herself, that's all. When he hurt her, it was a targeted and vicious attack. She'd been strong through it all, strong as always, calm, rational, powerful, and strategic, but it still hurt. And now she's upset. She doesn't have time to be upset. She doesn't even have time to be reorganizing her closet.

But the project is underway and she won't stop until she's satisfied with the final result. She breezes through the remaining colors, steering her thoughts towards considering her children and their lives, listing the grocery shopping she needs to do, and readjusting her schedule for the week to minimize her time in the negative-double-digit-plus-wind temperatures. When she's done pulling out all the colors, browns, grays, blacks, and casual clothes, all that's left on her bed are beige and cream colored jackets. She scoops up as many as she can at one time and of course it's that one suit that ends up falling out of her arms. Of course it's the suit she wore the first night she slept with Will.

Alicia sighs deeply as an idea forms in her mind. It's horrible, and even more horrible is the sense of glee that she gets from knowing that there's a very good chance it would work. She could temporarily solve some of her problems and throw Will off his game enough to pull off a courtroom victory (should her carefully planned legal strategies fail) just by her choice of clothing. He isn't above these games, so she won't be, either. Fight fire with fire; an eye for an eye.

She picks up the suit. She detaches the jacket from its hanger, then the skirt. Carefully and deliberately, Alicia folds both pieces and makes room in her oversized briefcase for them. She'll play it by ear, but she has every intention of picking the perfect moment to change into the suit.

It's not lost on her how fitting it is she'll be wearing it on what may well be Chicago's coldest day on record.


End file.
